a glance of haughty surprise, and said, "Do you suppose, sir, that I can
undertake to supply you with rags?" This will give an idea of the
curiously unsympathetic nature of the man. On another occasion I was
drawing a house, or beginning to draw one, when the master came to look
over my shoulder and found great fault with me for beginning with the
upper part of the edifice. "What stonemason or bricklayer," said he,
"would think of building his chimney before he had laid the first row of
stones on the foundation?" A young pupil must not correct the bad
reasoning of his elders, but it seemed to me that the cases of a
bricklayer building a real house and an artist representing one on paper
were not precisely the same. Later in life I found that the best artists
brought their works forward as much as possible simultaneously,
sketching all the parts lightly at first, and keeping them all in the
same degree of finish till the end. [Footnote: The most rational way to
paint is first to paint all the large masses together, then the smaller
or secondary masses, and finally the details, bringing the picture
forward all together, as nearly as possible.]

Nevertheless, the drawing-lessons were always a delightful break in our
week's occupation, and I remember with pleasure the walk in the morning
down to the drawing-master's house, two days in the week, and the happy
hour of messing with water-color that followed it. In those days of
blissful ignorance I had, of course, no conception of the difficulties
of art, and was making that delusively rapid apparent progress which is
so very encouraging to all incipient amateurs. Not a single study of
those times remains in my portfolios to-day, and I know not what may
have become of them. This is the more to be regretted, that in the fine
weather our master took us into the fields round Doncaster and taught us
to sketch from nature, which we accomplished in a rudimentary way.